Kara Chamberlain moved to approve September meeting minutes as read. Shari Kunza second. Passed without debate.

Vice President Chris Drews introduced candidate for President Gerry Johnsen. Gerry provided the following statement:

Hi I'm Gerry Johnsen and have volunteered to fill the association president board position for the 2011-12 season. Over the last 3 years I've helped coach the Irondale PeeWee and Squirt C teams and this year am helping with the Bantam B2s where my son Zac is playing. I've been involved in youth hockey over the past 10 years coaching from Mini Mites thru Junior Gold for an array of area hockey associations and served as VP with TriCity hockey as they were seeking merger partners.

First and foremost I welcome your input into both the near term tactics and longer term strategies IYHA needs to use in creating a fun and successful environment for our players to enjoy our sport here in the state of hockey. I also want to thank all of the association's volunteers on the board, the coaching staffs, the team managers and the parents. This organization is entirely dependent on your past and future commitments to supporting OUR hockey association

White ballot vote to approve Gerry Johnsen as IYHA President. Motion passed without debate. Welcome and thank you to Gerry! (Now get to work.)

Board Roundtable:

President: Glad to be aboard!

Vice President: Tournament filling up. 1 or 2 slots left to fill. Need help running the January tournament as I will be out of town. Tournament date is January 6-8.

Chris Drews moved to approve support of Boys and Girls HS Brochures, at $100 each. Mark Klein second. Motion passed without debate.

Secretary: No report.

Treasurer:

Financials presented. Discussion around outstanding current and former player payments owing, exceeding $14,000. Notice to go out to those that owe money, requesting payment of outstanding balance. Substantial balance owing both through fault of certain team treasurer, and not necessarily fault of parents. Communications from Treasurer with certain team treasurer, and others, have resulted in little response. Not acceptable. Players who owe more than $500 will receive certified letter. Respond and either pay or set up arrangements, otherwise we will forward to collection agency.

Proposed 3 payments this season. Discussion about moving payments up to first of month, times 4. Agreed to make payments due first of each month, November through February, with 7 day grace period. If player is not current with February payment, or acceptable arrangements made, player may be unable to participate in playoffs/further activities.

Discussion around “extra” costs that mite teams may incur (jamborees, refs, etc.). Should be team expense not association.

Boys Program Coordinator:

Tryouts complete pending two injured players at Bantam level. All teams are set pending one additional peewee.

Problem we have now is that kids are registering after date of team declaration. Results in too large teams. Propose to close registration earlier next year. For example, squirt teams are now 17 skaters each, but at time of declaration only 25 squirts had registered.

Need to clarify that goalies on a level’s highest team who try out for goalie must expect to play goalie full time.

Discussion around registration timing and potentially assigning players to a practice squad if late registrants force teams to exceed 15 skaters.

Regarding tryout process--assess using people with no player in association for future tryouts. Swap evaluators with another association, or use professional evaluators like Blaine does, or use parent monitor with current system. Current process is very fair with largest problem being evaluators talking out of school. Need to reaffirm each year that evaluators need to maintain confidentiality of the process—big mouths cause big headaches.

Mark Klein moved to establish, as IYHA policy, that goalies who tryout and make a level’s top team as a goalie, should expect to play goalie full time, at the discretion of the team’s head coach. Chris Drews second. Motion passed following debate.

Girls Program Coordinator: Tryouts done. We have our own 10B team. Combo at 12s (A and B) (waived into CR) and 14A (waived into IYHA). Lots of ice, not so many scrimmages. Need to solidify accounting setup.

District 10 is going to start policing the locker room policy tighter and to that end, each team needs to follow the USA hockey rule and have 2 locker room supervisors in the locker rooms at all times. There will be fines to associations, coaches, and managers for not adhering to this.

At the 14U level, currently the Duluth Marshall team is not a registered USA Hockey team(the Duluth Icebreakers are though) and as such, 14U teams are not allowed to play or scrimmage them. There will be penalties for playing them.

The 14U co-op team between Blaine and Centennial hosted by Blaine, is a B team.

If there are any concerns about the name of the 14U team those need to be addressed right away. Currently it will be listed as Coon Rapids, no combo name from what I understand.

I need to get all the coach/manager contact information to the District ASAP. Could Mark and Shari please send me that info?

Thanks to Kara for all her hard work to get the games scheduled. Very difficult work.

League play begins on Nov 14th. Good luck teams!!

Ice Commissioner: Two rounds of game scheduling done, one more to go. Once games are set, schedules will be provided to coaches. Ice schedule out through 11/14, made difficult by CR co-op, and games still needing to be finalized. Maybe alternate months with Coon Rapids to ease scheduling issues.

Registration Coordinator: Roster sign-off 11/14. Need all info gathered and given to Beth ASAP. Need to get consent to treats and volunteer checks. Verify background checks are complete—online through MN Hockey.

Equipment Manager: Jerseys and such to be distributed. Need some new jerseys starting next year—need to plan better for next year. Teams can purchase jerseys at their own expense.

Standing Reports:

Player and Coach Development Committee: Warmups and tryouts went good. Skills clinics have started. Board reaffirms policy that all teams participate in clinics and goalie clinics.

1. Chuck Ferraro wants to conduct a post-season bantam-fest. No check. Open to all present and future bantams. 4 teams, equal rosters. 5 hours of ice would be needed. Round-robin tournament with championship and super-championship games. Good for HS coach to see, good for players, good for coaches. Discussion around ability to do this. How to fund? User fee or otherwise, donated ice? Other issues discussed, but consensus is to revisit later in the season and see if this can be pulled off.

2. Goalie incentive – need to increase numbers of goalies. How do we do this for levels with too few goalies? Board prefers to address this on a case by case basis.

3. Handbook tabled to next meeting.

4. Squirt waivers to City of Lakes – IYHA not offering a C level so those interested should be allowed to waive out. Parents should recognize that this is an option if your player is looking for a low-cost C level, or recreational, hockey experience.

5. Helmet color – discussed again. Want kids to look like a team. Second year bantams, if they move to a helmet color worn by their future high school team, will not be kicked off the ice. No reason that younger players shouldn’t be required to wear black helmets. HS helmet color changes are unpredictable, we need to set color independent of what HS decides.

6. Team Jerseys – see above. For time being, no association purchase of jerseys, but certainly teams can decide to purchase jerseys with names/numbers. Suggest if teams do this, they go with gold jerseys and pick single manufacturer, probably through Dave’s. Due to number overlap, can’t guarantee future use in all cases, but pick odd numbers to limit overlap.

7. Apparel – options to be sent to coaches. Need to limit apparel choices so that apparel can be worn for more than one season.

8. Pix by Make It Big Photos, earlier this year.

9. Reminder--No dryland in Ramsey County rinks. Looking at HBTC at SR, $800/year for pre-game, dryland, and card for drop-in. Ends up to be $53 per kid, roughly.

10. Fundraising Committee—either needs people to step up or it will be dormant. Send out an email… Heggies fundraiser idea is still percolating (Phil).

11. T-shirt orders – scrap the t-shirt ordering and direct people to Dave’s and Lettermens.